Thailand's Daily Crime Pill #8: The Ghost of Bill Young & A Leaky Treasure Chest
History is the only insurance policy True Crime Thailand needs.
Dear expats and readers,
One of the great things about covering crime in Thailand — whether historic or present — is that there’s never a shortage in source material.
This is the Land of Smiles, and scratch that pearly-white veneer and you’ll find an exquisitely plump underbelly of crime.
The problem that I confront is that there’s a glut of stories I could cover. If you follow the Thai press, there are murders, scams, and drug smuggling stories galore. But the sands of time seem to slip through my fingers faster than they can clack away on the keyboard.
Subject matter choices I make are typically of personal interest — the Golden Triangle narcotics trade, Thai serial killers, farang murders, scams, etc. — or by request of my readers.
One man’s story snagged my mind’s attention this past weekend and I couldn’t jerk it free. That man’s name, Bill Young.
If you’re reading this, then I’d wager that you’re probably familiar with the man’s story. But in case you haven’t, I’ll give you an overview.
William Young was born on October 28th, 1934 and was raised among in the mountains of Burma and Thailand. His grandfather was a missionary who was revered as a deity by the Lahu hilltribes, who had a prophesy that a white-skinned god would visit them.
The young Bill grew up around the Lahu and other hilltribes, learning their language and customs, along with the lay of the land. He hunted, trekked, and learned jungle survival from the Lahu.
His knowledge of Lahu, Tai Yai, Thai, and Laos languages, along with his deep and wide connections with hilltribes throughout the region, attracted the attention of the CIA, who recruited him as a key asset.
Bill joined the CIA in 1958 as an interpreter and translator, but soon joined the CIA's paramilitary wing known as the Special Operations Division. His colleagues in the agency joked that he had an American exterior to disguise his Lahu interior.
It's hard to summarize the legend around this guy. You can hop on over to Wikipedia to get a general sense of him, which I'd highly recommend.
I poked around a bit online to learn more about Bill Young. Most of it was re-hashed info from a couple different books and other primary sources.
It made me wonder what else could be out there on him.
So I trotted on over to WikiLeaks to try my luck there as any two-bit gumshoe would do — I mean, Assange went down to get this info out, might as well make good use of it.
When I searched for Bill Young, two cables showed up.
Both still classified as secret, both sent just days apart from each other in August 1973, both of them tagged with CIA and narcotics, and one of them tagged with “Chartchai Chunhawan”.
If you’re unfamiliar, that name refers to ชาติชาย ชุณหะวัณ, Chatichai Choonhavan, a Thai army officer and politician, who raised through the ranks as chairman of the Thai Nation Party and served as the Prime Minister of Thailand from August 1988 until the coup of February 1991.
Odd connection there — don’t you think?
I actually don’t know exactly what to make of it, and I reckon it will take a great deal of digging to strike a lead on the matter, but I know I can trust my learned readers to help with the matter — just like they did with Crime Pill #7 and the logistics question, where two shipping and procurement experts emailed me to confirm my suspicions about the numbers quoted in that CNN article.
I hit a dead-end on the WikiLeaks trail for more info on Bill Young, but it got me thinking — what else is in this treasure chest of leaks?
There are 84,696 cables sent from the U.S. Embassies in Thailand; 50,398 cables sent to Thailand. I figured there must be something.
So I got to sniffing other lines of inquiry: 1,705 cables related to narcotics sent from Thailand; 600 related to weapons; 243 related to prison; 419 related to heroin.
I think you get the picture. There’s plenty here to keep me busy for awhile, and I just might make it a regular feature of the Crime Pill to include little nuggets I find when rummaging through the cables.
As for Bill Young? If you read up on his story, you’d know that he ended his life in Chiang Mai on April 1st, 2011, with a bullet to the head. Grim — but a fact nonetheless.
It’s been written that some Hollywood outfit wrote Bill a $100,000 check for the rights to make a film about his life story. The film was never made, and it was one of the last hopes of the man.
I’d be curious to know if any readers knew Bill or have a story that they’d like to share of him. Honestly, I don’t want the man’s memory to fade.
The next Crime Pill invites you to check-in to a Bangkok hotel where we’ll explore another murder story on my radar.
Other things I've been reading:
Jake Needham's latest novel in the Inspector Samuel Tay series, Mongkok Station. Released in October 2020, the novel set in Hong Kong is a finalist for both the International Thriller Writer and Barry Awards. I’ve just picked it up and will give a short review when finished.
Jim Algie's recent blog post about visiting a convicted killer in a Bangkok prison. Well-worth the read!
That’s all for today…
Until tomorrow’s Crime Pill, stay safe out there everybody.
- True Crime Thailand